Vancouver program

Building Smarter OrganizationsWhat makes organizations smart? How do they excel? What secrets do they know? Our speakers share key strategies for building smarter organizations, highlights real world examples, and spark insights and ideas for making your organization smarter!

Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged OrganizationOne-on-one with author Dan Pontefract, Head, Learning & Collaboration, TELUS, about his new book and the five models that can help your organization be more connected, engaged, and successful.

Smart Tech = Smarter OrganizationsAdvances in mobility, connectivity, online collaboration, voice and video interaction, and concepts like Unified Communications, BYOD and Cloud, have propelled our thinking of productivity and workforce wellness to new heights. The next generation workforce has long prepared itself for new ways of collaboration and new ways of work. Working where we want and when we want has become part of our daily reality, company cultures are quickly adapting to the benefits of an empowered and mobile workforce. Our smart tech expert shares tips for building smarter organizations, collaborative workspaces and empowered, productive and untethered workforces.

Conversations, collaboration and facilitation: A comedy of meeting errorsRemember the best (and worst) meeting you've ever attended? This humorous set of interactive skits will show you why some meetings and events are truly awful, and why the best ones are often the ones that are most skilfully (and sometimes very subtly) facilitated. Introduces and uses Group Works: A Pattern Language (and 91-card deck) for bringing life to meetings and other gatherings.

Info Blitz: a fast-paced look at four solutions being used to build smarter organizations

1) Innovation using Jive @ PwC CanadaHow do you harness the innovative capability of 5,500 talented people spread out over 27 office locations in 5 time zones working in 4 different lines of service? You connect them together with a social networking platform, add some leadership, and leverage some hidden culture. This presentation will provide the how - and the how not - of creating a sustainable innovation machine for your organization using an award-winning technology platform.

2) Culture = bottom-line impactOrganizational culture is as close to a “magic bullet” as one can find in truly understanding and positively impacting the inner workings of an organization. It is implicit in the way in which people collaborate, projects are accomplished, leaders lead and manage, performance is assessed and how an organization performs and meets its strategic objectives. If one is to understand how to create a “smart” organization, one must look to the issue of culture. Those who ignore this crucial issue do so at their own risk. The most cleverly crafted strategic plans depend on individuals to deliver them – the way people behave ultimately determines success or failure. This talk focuses on organizational culture, explores its importance to an understanding of the “smart” organization, and shares case study examples of the impact that a focus on culture has had on overall organizational performance.

3) Increasing collaboration & communicationOrganizational culture is as close to a “magic bullet” as one can find in truly understanding and positively impacting the inner workings of an organization. It is implicit in the way in which people collaborate, projects are accomplished, leaders lead and manage, performance is assessed and how an organization performs and meets its strategic objectives. If one is to understand how to create a “smart” organization, one must look to the issue of culture. Those who ignore this crucial issue do so at their own risk. The most cleverly crafted strategic plans depend on individuals to deliver them – the way people behave ultimately determines success or failure. This talk focuses on organizational culture, explores its importance to an understanding of the “smart” organization, and shares case study examples of the impact that a focus on culture has had on overall organizational performance.

4) A community of leaders = smarter organizationsThe workplace is changing. Leadership is changing. The future is collaborative. While this sounds good in theory, the question remains: what does this actually look like? What can a leader do to meet this collaborative future?